I am out of town this week judging a dance competition which means someone else is responsible for all my meals. Big problem. I don’t like it and neither does my eating disorder.

On the first day they offered me:
1. A doughnut
2. Pizza
3. Caesar salad with a side of chicken (I’m vegetarian in case anyone forgot)
4. Chocolate on the judges table as a “snack”

I hate to be a high maintenance b***h, but I asked the organizer to take me grocery shopping at 11 o’clock at night so that I could get some healthy/safe foods to keep with me. We are in the theatre for about 15 hours a day and there is no opportunity to sneak away and take care of the food situation. There is also very little option to exercise as I go straight to bed when I get back to the hotel at midnight and can barely crawl back out at 6am to repeat the process.

The organizer of the competition (who is responsible for all us judges) is an ex-dance teacher who has a penchant for junk food. She eyeballs my breakfast every morning.
“Oh I see you are eating healthy again,” she feels the need to comment as she shovels waffles down the hatch. I put an apple in my bag to take the theatre; she takes a croissant, three bagels and an assortment of muffins.
“Here’s the salad you asked for. I got myself some McDonalds.”
It is painful to watch.

She comes skulking around the judges table when we are on a break and raids the basket of “snacks” next to me. She takes out all the chocolates.
“I like peppermint patties. Do you?”
I snap on my megawatt, competition smile, “well feel free to eat them because I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?” she throws in my face.

This is my first premeditated binge in a long time. I have forgotten quite how long.

I plot it while I am still at work. After another day of being haunted by my reflection in the studio, I snap. It is as though it is second nature. I have not forgotten this: hurriedly grabbing food at a grocery store, already euphoric; frantically eating on the drive home, oblivious.

“Numbers surrounded us.
when we closed the door
at night, exhausted,
slipped beneath the door
and crept with us into bed,
and in our dreams
pounded at our foreheads
until they sank into the sea or madness
until the sun greeted us with its zero
and we went running
to begin again the infinite
1 of each new day.

We had time
to give things a number,
to add them up,
to reduce them
to powder,
wastelands of numbers.
We papered the world
with numbers
but things survived,
they fled from numbers,
went mad in their quantities,
evaporated,
leaving the numbers empty.

For you
I want things
Let numbers go to jail,
let them march
in perfect columns
until they give the sum
total of infinity.

Oh, the thirst to know
how many!
The hunger
to know
how many
stars in the sky!